As noted in this Pete Hines tweet, The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim, the next game in The Elder Scrolls series was announced at last night's video game awards, as the tweet says: "For all those who have been asking, TESV, sequel to Oblivion, has been announced. Skyrim will be here on 11.11.11. Wait till you see it." The Elder Scrolls Website has a teaser trailer for the game, which also concludes with that November 11 release date. On a related note, The Elder Scrolls Facebook page invites you to join the elder council, also offering this image from the trailer. This tweet indicates the game will be using an all new engine, which we would guess is id's Tech 5 engine being created for RAGE and DOOM 4.

Come on. You know it's over. This game won't be the Morrowind successor that us old school PC people want. I don't know what it will be, but I'll bet my kidneys and anything else you want that it will, in fact, be 100% directed at console.

The reason games as we once knew them went away is it became a socially acceptable hobby, and now all the "normal" people play. And the hardcore are a serious minority.

Our wallets don't speak loudly enough for AAA devs to worry about our wants when they know that Halo/Gears of War nation will buy three million copies of their 360 game.

Sorry.

I agree with what you're saying.

The misunderstanding here is that I meant "going the console way" differently than you interpreted it. There's "going the console way" ala Fallout: New Vegas and "going the console way" ala Splinter Cell: Conviction.

finga wrote on Dec 14, 2010, 06:19:With regard to the quests, that's what I meant - you could do them all. Your choice was what order to do them in.

As far as the skill checks go, no, it didn't have them in your narrow definition of the term, but it most certainly did "check" your skill when casting spells, fighting tougher enemies, and yes, performing stealth moves. Persuasion skill did something, and I'll leave it to you to try and recall how it affected your persuasion attempts. (Hint: these games did what you're alleging they didn't, but they did it in a way that you didn't want or expect.)

Morrowind and Oblivion are action-RPGs, as much action as they are RPG. If you disagree, well, take a look at something like Borderlands to see the kind of game you're actually trying to describe.

(Why do people think that forcing players to make mutually exclusive choices is some keystone, vitally important element to RPGs? For me, the key element is in making meaningful choices for your avatar(s) in the world, and Bethesda's games most certainly did that, through gear, skills, and the missions you chose to complete. The simple fact that these games mostly didn't close off one path of advancement just because you chose another does not automatically make them not-an-RPG.)

No it doesnt, it just makes them inferior. If you cant get why that is then maybe role playing (you know the RP in RPG) isnt really your cup of tea...

With regard to the quests, that's what I meant - you could do them all. Your choice was what order to do them in.

As far as the skill checks go, no, it didn't have them in your narrow definition of the term, but it most certainly did "check" your skill when casting spells, fighting tougher enemies, and yes, performing stealth moves. Persuasion skill did something, and I'll leave it to you to try and recall how it affected your persuasion attempts. (Hint: these games did what you're alleging they didn't, but they did it in a way that you didn't want or expect.)

Morrowind and Oblivion are action-RPGs, as much action as they are RPG. If you disagree, well, take a look at something like Borderlands to see the kind of game you're actually trying to describe.

(Why do people think that forcing players to make mutually exclusive choices is some keystone, vitally important element to RPGs? For me, the key element is in making meaningful choices for your avatar(s) in the world, and Bethesda's games most certainly did that, through gear, skills, and the missions you chose to complete. The simple fact that these games mostly didn't close off one path of advancement just because you chose another does not automatically make them not-an-RPG.)

Both of those games have real-time combat, which is already a pretty big concession towards the same accessibility I'm talking about. Also, Dragon Age had four characters instead of Baldur's Gate's six, and New Vegas still had things like VATS. These games are compromises on the old days of RPGs as well.

Yes, there have been compromises. However, both FO:NV and Dragon Age still retained the fundamentals of CRPGs. Oblivion and Morrowind do not.

Oblivion and Morrowind both also had everything you're talking about, except maybe choice and consequence in that there was generally only one solution to almost every quest, and your choice was more in the multiple quest lines you could advance at any given time, letting you choose which to advance next.

What are you talking about? In Oblivion, you could do every single quest and every quest was completely linear. You could be the master of the fighter's guild, mage's build, thieves' guild and dark brotherhood all in one playthrough. There were no meaningful choices and, as such, no consequences. It's sad, too, because there were many opportunities for interesting choices. Being able to choose between the Fighter's Guild and Blackwood Company would have been great, as would being able to choose between the Mage's Guild and the Necromancers. Or choosing to betray the Dark Brotherhood. So many opportunities yet none were realized.

Oblivion had no skill checks. Lockpicking and speechcraft consisted of lousy minigames that you could complete regardless of how developed their respective skills were. Unlike good RPGs, where character development is a meaningful process that forces you to specialize, Oblivion lets you max out every single stat and skill in one playthrough. You can be a mage-thief-fighter-assassin-ranger with ease.

Granted, Morrowind had stronger RPG elements than Oblivion. The different guilds had specific skill requirements for each rank and I think there were conflicting quests as well, making it difficult to become a master of every guild in one playthrough. During the main quest, you had to choose to join one of the three major Houses. You couldn't join them all. Weapons also relied on chance-to-hit which made grinding much more difficult. Likewise, spells had chance-to-cast. Still, aside from these things, Morrowind was lacking most of the fundamental RPG tenets. There were no moral choices and the vast majority of quests were completely linear.

Jdrez wrote on Dec 13, 2010, 18:03:Our wallets don't speak loudly enough for AAA devs to worry about our wants when they know that Halo/Gears of War nation will buy three million copies of their 360 game.

Jdrez wrote on Dec 13, 2010, 18:03:Our wallets don't speak loudly enough for AAA devs to worry about our wants when they know that Halo/Gears of War nation will buy three million copies of their 360 game.

this seems mostly true however i do think that there are developers who still push for more "hardcore" rpg elements (see: obsidian) and bethesda seems to want to strike a balance rather than go full-out "commercial"... but the problems you mention come into play when the publishers get involved, and push for the most overblown "commercialization" possible

i personally think a lot of developers would rather deliver a good GAME instead of a vapid CASH-IN... but unfortunately the people that fund the development dont care about that, they just want a larger return on their investment

Come on. You know it's over. This game won't be the Morrowind successor that us old school PC people want. I don't know what it will be, but I'll bet my kidneys and anything else you want that it will, in fact, be 100% directed at console.

The reason games as we once knew them went away is it became a socially acceptable hobby, and now all the "normal" people play. And the hardcore are a serious minority.

Our wallets don't speak loudly enough for AAA devs to worry about our wants when they know that Halo/Gears of War nation will buy three million copies of their 360 game.

Jerykk wrote on Dec 13, 2010, 12:12:You do realize that there have been successful, big-budget RPGs right? Dragon Age and Fallout: New Vegas come to mind. Both games retain traditional RPG elements like stats-based gameplay, skill checks, choice & consequence, etc. Adding these things to the Elder Scrolls series wouldn't hurt sales at all. If anything, it would improve them.

Both of those games have real-time combat, which is already a pretty big concession towards the same accessibility I'm talking about. Also, Dragon Age had four characters instead of Baldur's Gate's six, and New Vegas still had things like VATS. These games are compromises on the old days of RPGs as well.

Oblivion and Morrowind both also had everything you're talking about, except maybe choice and consequence in that there was generally only one solution to almost every quest, and your choice was more in the multiple quest lines you could advance at any given time, letting you choose which to advance next.

Jerykk wrote on Dec 13, 2010, 12:12:You do realize that there have been successful, big-budget RPGs right? Dragon Age and Fallout: New Vegas come to mind. Both games retain traditional RPG elements like stats-based gameplay, skill checks, choice & consequence, etc. Adding these things to the Elder Scrolls series wouldn't hurt sales at all. If anything, it would improve them.

Unfortunately forums and even reviews are filled with bitching about those games' RPG elements often times. I was hoping that the success of Dragon Age and New Vegas would lead to more like them in the future, but Dragon Age 2 appears to be going the opposite way and who knows what Skyrim will do.

Morrowind is my favorite game of all time, so it's hard for me to bash Bethesda, but Oblivion and Fallout 3 both show that their good writers are gone and their targets are aimed squarely at Xbox Halo gamers.

There is no developer out there that can make money by spending tens of millions on a game with huge production budgets and then give it trudging turn-based combat and RPG systems only an autistic person can decode. If you want the game to be bigger than life, you're going to have to "deal" with accessibility. And if you have to have your sperged-out RPG ridiculousness, then I hear there are a lot of indie RPG developers out there making your game (Dwarf Fortress, Avernum, etc). Go enjoy those for what they are, and then enjoy a game like Oblivion (and probably TESV) for what it is. You can't have both in the same game. The perfect game for you is a retail failure, and these creative minds *do* have mouths to feed.

You do realize that there have been successful, big-budget RPGs right? Dragon Age and Fallout: New Vegas come to mind. Both games retain traditional RPG elements like stats-based gameplay, skill checks, choice & consequence, etc. Adding these things to the Elder Scrolls series wouldn't hurt sales at all. If anything, it would improve them.

Mashiki Amiketo wrote on Dec 12, 2010, 20:58:Animations are handled by the engine but are limited to the person writing the animation files. Just to burst your bubble, of course you could use a mod where the animation runs have been increased.

Or you could use the infamous bsa manager(don't forget to edit the hexblock), and extract the meshes folder, then modify the animations on your own using niftool along with nifskope and make them as detailed as you want.

While there is no doubt that some mods put a lot of effort into polishing the animations, and they are a bit better than the ones supplied... the engine still sucks at taking a good raw animation from 3D Studio Max, and converting it to it's native engine format. I'm not sure whether it's a plug-in issue or the way the engine renders animations, itself. Just look at any other company that has used Gamebryo... they all have that stiff-wonkey-animation issue (some worse than others) in their games. Are you going to say that every company that has used Gamebryo, has bad animators???